We have developed a membrane that will take place of human embryonic membrane: Prof. Sheila MacNeil

Currently there is a great methodology for treating scarring of the cornea but it requires excellent surgeons and tissue bank so that you can get human amnion and specialist laboratories for culturing cells.Shahid Akhter | ETHealthWorld | May 10, 2017, 08:47 IST

In an interview with ETHealthworld, Prof. Sheila MacNeil, Professor of Tissue Engineering, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Sheffield, UK, talks about their latest developments in the field of healthcare research. Edited excerpts:

How has been your experience working with LV Prasad?

I have been privileged to work with Dr Virender Sangwan in LV Prasad for nearly six years. The challenges were to improve on what they were doing in order to make it safer and simpler so that it could be made available to many more patients.

Dr Sangwan found a way to improve how he was doing his surgery for some patients. We have developed a membrane that will take place of human embryonic membrane. Currently there is a great methodology for treating scarring of the cornea but it requires excellent surgeons and tissue bank so that you can get human amnion and specialist laboratories for culturing cells.

You have to bring all these three things together to make it work. It does work but there are very few centres in the world doing this and we wanted to see if we could simplify things. We thought to we make a synthetic alternative instead of using human amnion. We wanted to make it out of something that was well known like Piaggio which is the same material that is used in dissolvable stitches. Working with LV Prasad we have developed this material and it is now in first stage clinical safety trail in India.

Tell us about your research at University of Sheffield?

In the University of Sheffield I do a lot of biomaterials and tissue engineering research. I work on soft tissues, skin and more recently on the cornea.

My focus is to try and find ways to bring research from the laboratory out into the clinic and I have worked with burn surgeons for many years in culturing skin cells to treat patients with extensive burns and also to treat patients with non healing ulcers such as diabetic ulcers. I have also treated patients with scarring of the urethra.

How is UK-India Researchers Link Workshop helping the young researchers?

This UK-India Researchers Link Workshop is funded by the British Council and involves Society of Chemistry. We have the funding to allow researchers from UK and India to come together in competition for four days. This funding buys them the luxury of time.

In these four days the clinicians can talk to the scientists and explain what their problems are. They can talk about the technologies that they have and by meeting and coming up with research that is aligned to clinical problems, we hope to get good quality research that is clinically relevant and makes an impact for India. This will be a boost to the careers of the younger researchers as it will give them the appetite for working in clinically relevant problems.

Unfortunately researchers will quite often develop expertise in the particular areas. They may become great at it and publish wonderful papers but it is not always aligned where the clinical needs are. I would like to get those interactions going early in their career so that they can start to develop relationships, collaborations, grants and do more research that is clinically relevant. This is what really makes an impact on patients.

With immense pride “India Live” celebrated its 10th national conference in Mumbai from 28th February to 3rd March 2019. The conference turned out to be a gold mine of information, with emphasis on academics, education and exchange of knowledge with leaders in interventional cardiology from both India and abroad.